‘Red Flag Gun Seizures’ Major Threat to Gun Owners

In the wake of the Parkland, FL school shooting from February of 2018, the forward momentum for the gun rights movement has stalled in many state legislatures around the country.

While there have been some bright spots — like Wyoming’s passage of Stand-Your-Ground law 30 days after the Florida shooting — many states abandoned pro-gun bills and began to look at advancing gun control legislation.

And the states considering gun control legislation are not just ‘blue states,’ but Republican strongholds like Missouri, Iowa, Ohio and others.

The go-to bill for both Republicans and Democrats, looking to capitalize on the death of innocent children in their quest to advance gun control legislation, has been ‘Red Flag Gun Seizure’ legislation.

Also known as extreme risk protection orders, ‘Red Flag Gun Seizure’ legislation was passed into law in Florida and Maryland this year — and is already on the books in Vermont, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

In addition, lawmakers in Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, Colorado, New York and many others tried to pass ‘Red Flag Gun Seizure’ legislation and are publicly planning to resume this fight in the 2019 session.

In a nutshell, ‘Red Flag Gun Seizure’ legislation allows someone to make a claim that a gun owner is a threat to themselves or someone else and allows a judge order the firearms to be seized pending a future hearing.

Some gun owners may be tempted to shrug and say, ‘Well, I don’t want a crazy person carrying guns…so maybe we should support this.’

But that is the wrong approach, for numerous reasons.

Guns Seized Before You Have Been Convicted!

The concept of innocent until proven guilty is sacrosanct in the American jurisprudence system. Americans are simply not allowed to be convicted and stripped of constitutional rights and freedoms without being convicted in a court of law, where their due-process rights can be protected.

But this standard of due process is completely upended via ‘Red Flag Gun Seizure’ legislation, in that these seizure orders are being issued BEFORE a gun owner has been convicted of anything!

More than that, your guns can be seized before you have even been indicted or even charged with any criminal wrong doing!

The bi-partisan nature of this legislative attack makes it incredibly dangerous.

In addition, the fact that this is not a straightforward AR15 ban, high capacity magazine ban, or a Michael Bloomberg-backed universal firearms registration bill means that this legislation is simply not on the radar of many gun organizations collectively, and gun owners individually.

If gun owners do not get up to speed on this legislation very quickly, we are likely going to see a large number of additional states pass this legislation next year.